#just know karlach and astarion literally are foils

[bhaalsdeepbat]

Astarion: Finally, we're catching up on our puppet master. And the hunt ends at Moonrise Towers.

screaming crying throwing up over this line with durge and romanced astarion on my duo run. they both start as puppets, then are free enough of their former masters to make their own choices, then they both have a choice: chain themself to their master or be free.

with durge that's either resist or become bhaal's chosen. If they resist, they're marking to certain death. To be free of Bhaal is to die, and I think they're acutely aware of that. To become his Chosen is to extend the amount of time they live, but they know it won't truly be living, if they live their life in service to another.

with astarion it's to break the cycle of abuse and be more than what nearly 200 years of empathy-breaking hell - Sisyphus pushing up the boulder but make it seducing people, eating rats and insects, night after night, knowing everyone you touch is doomed to die - made him OR unchain himself to everything Cazador did by killing Cazador without ascending, allowing him the safety of his abuser being gone so he can finally start feeling and healing without the ever-present threat of becoming a slave to Cazador again.

Their romanced "bad" endings all require someone to become the other's puppet. If Durge becomes Bhaal's Chosen, they force Astarion back into servitude and make him no more than a puppet after taking over the Absolute to start slaughtering the world in Bhaal's name. If Astarion Ascends, Durge either agrees to the loss of their independence and personhood by becoming a spawn OR the relationship falls apart.

I don't have anything else to say I'm just screaming about this lmao

[yangcherie]

bathing.

𐀔 pairings: cast (astarion, gale, wyll, lae’zel, shadowheart, karlach, halsin) x female!tiefling!tav (reader).

𐀔 content warnings: suggestive, everybody is a little freak, non-consensual voyeurism, implied scent kink (gale), mentions of scars, afab anatomy. tiefling anatomy.

𐀔 sypnosis: what is a warrior to do when all their companions are peeping toms?

𐀔 author’s note: they are freaks and its been very long since i’ve written. please forgive a lady if what she’s written is unappealing.

“Can you keep it – fucking quiet?!”

Astarion whisper-yells at the entire party of people hiding within bushes and treelines, all fighting tooth and nail like rabid animals for a peek (and taste) of their ragtag, frustratingly attractive leader’s curves.

They didn’t even mean to stumble into eachother, each to their own blindly traversing through the thickets of the woods towards the nearest river. Tav simply mentioned having to retire early to take a bath (much to Gale’s dismay), and they all hungrily jumped towards the opportunity like dogs to a meatless bone, the one of the hopefully many chances they’ll see you naked, vulnerable, and shivering – even if it’s only due to the lack of warmth in the river’s streams.

It’s wrong, debauched, even. Hells, even literal devils, Karlach and Wyll, wear faces ridden with shame. Of course, they (namely Astarion and Lae’zel) poked at the others stalking as if they weren’t shamelessly doing the same.

The tension in the air was thick, each a barrel on the verge of explosion ready to wipe out the recently discovered possibility of rivalries and competition – but they couldn’t blame eachother; there was just something about you that made you so very enticing. They all thought it was incredibly silly to think only one person would want you.

“Well,” Astarion clicked his tongue in displeasure, having his private time foiled. Still, he smiled sardonically. “we’re all degenerates, it seems. We’re all looking forward to having a... fun time.”

A deep rumble came, and it surprisingly did not come from the forest ground. It was simply Halsin, all too polite and calm smiles. Astarion groaned; he was sick of this big fucking oaf with hearts for eyes and a log of wood for brains. “We are not depraved for simply yearning to admire our friend in a state of tranquil—”

“Oh, please! Don’t act like a saint in front of me!” The vampire spawn huffed, hands on his hips. “We’re all here for the same reason, we all want to see Tav fucking naked, no point in lying now!”

Tints of red and pink all rushed to everyone’s faces, and even Shadowheart was reduced to fiddling with her fingers together. Though awkward coughs ensued in the air, not a single word of denial was uttered.

Karlach is first to speak up, ever brazen. “It’s true!” She says with her signature sharp smile. “I wanted to see her tits!”

(Lae’zel and Astarion nodded approvingly to Karlach’s honesty. Halsin and Gale quietly shared their sentiments on their preference to your ass. Shadowheart and Wyll could not disagree to both.)

Amidst their busy conversation and debate regarding your body’s fine qualities, the alarmingly close and approaching noises of branches snapping and leaves crunching had rendered them silent, panicked shivers and goosebumps on their skin. With shared glances and only a few split seconds to react, the party floundered and flailed for whatever they could use to stay hidden.

“Settle down, you circus; Tav’s coming!” Wyll is the first amongst the party to silently and comically dive into a bush with Karlach, clutching their tails to avoid it rustling about in excitement. Halsin had thrown Gale and Astarion atop a tree’s thick branches before joining them. Lae’zel, disappointingly, camoflauges just well with the greenery, watching Shadowheart flounder about and settle for lying on the ground with grass over her face.

“All you filthy ska'keth.” Lae’zel hisses, letting everyone know of your now visible presence, the halting of your footsteps along the other edge of the river. “Enjoy the show.”

Across the distance, their focus had been shifted to you and now solely you.

You quietly groan, trudging towards the river you’ve been searching to no end, you set down your basket of fine oils, herbs and waxes as your armored limbs ache and practically cry for a dip in the clear stream. With no haste, you take in the cool night air, this little moment of peace, away from prying eyes you’ve fought long and hard to obtain. Sweat trickles down your throat, your tail swaying in contentment in the calm atmosphere.

Quickly deciding you’ve had enough of the crisp air, you reach towards your body to unclasp and unfasten the many buckles on your durable armor – starting with the iron top, quickly taking it off to reveal your bare, battle-worn chest and hastily discarding the metal on your legs, throwing them aside in favor of letting the cold air bite at your naked, scarred body before you go into the water; allowing your body a little moment of respite from the suffocation and heat of tight, bloody armor – even letting your tail sway around freely instead of being constricted to being stiff. A content smile creeps its way onto your face.

You lightly step your way from the sand to the edge of the water, continuing to walk until you’re trembling from the cold, until you’re hips-down in the water. A grateful sigh is pulled from your lips as you start to wade about, your hands subtly working to wash the dried blood, gore and grime off of your body and hair – using the oils and wax soaps of sweet woodruff and wine from your basket, even scrubbing your horns. A little part of you finds this normalcy almost unfamiliar, uncomfortable; it’s been quite a while you’ve taken care of yourself. Your thoughts start to drift; prior to your abduction by the Nautiloid ship, were you ever taken care of, like this? By other hands, even?

(You hope so.)

Another sigh is dragged out of you, though wearier as guilt treads within you. Just a little moment of peace, of indulgence before you go back to the dreadful task of keeping your companions and yourself alive and fighting. Just a little more time. You think you deserve it.

A silence was washed over the forest, and the party as they all beheld you and your battle-worn body. It felt almost sacred, like doing this would have them damned to the Hells and below but it was simply too captivating. Your bodice was a web and a product of war, and they were caught mesmerized – with only the dense forest and one another to witness their quickly unravelling need for you. But even then, they felt some semblance to pity. What they wouldn’t give to the gods right now to be by your side and give you some tending to.

The ridges down your back, the swaying base of your tail, the alluring image of your hips and ass teasingly disappearing into the water below, the silhouette of your horns – that untroubled smile on your lips – they all drink it in with their eyes in a fashion similar to Astarion’s throat would with your blood.

They savor it for as long as they can, before stepping out of the trance as Gale himself not-so-quietly attempted to clamber down from the rough-bark tree he was settled in, dropping down to the dirt and crushing the leaves loudly and ungracefully. Shadowheart gaped with mortification at him from the ground, everyone wishing to every god above you would have mistaken the sound as a particularly large animal, perhaps an owlbear and not a wizard along with an entire party intruding on your privacy.

“Gale! What in the Nine Hells are you doing?!”

Astarion had settled for whisper-yelling once again, pointing at him accusingly from his position atop the tree’s branches besides Halsin. Gale waved his hand, silently telling him to shut the fuck up, before urgently pointing at your discarded armor and clothing, then proceeding to give him a big smile and two thumbs up.

Surely enough to the mortification of the party, he quickly cast Misty Step over himself to travel to your area and hastily swiped (stole) anything soft – including your unattended bandages and undergarments, taking a small moment to put it to his nose and re-casting the spell to return below the tree within a few seconds. He wallowed in his pride before with a swift motion, tucked the newly acquired materia into the pockets of his robe much to the discomfort (and mild envy) of all of them.

“A man has to do and take what he can.” Gale reasoned to nobody in particular, nodding solemnly as if he just shared a piece of wisdom. He suppressed a yelp as Lae’zel then threw a rock at him, followed by another as Astarion thwacked a small branch straight to his forehead from above.

“Just leave it.” Wyll snidely commented, fighting with his life to tear away his eyes from your moonlit form, breaking out of a trance. “We should leave, go back to camp. It’d be suspicious if everyone just disappeared.”

“Ugh, you are such a killjoy, Wyll.” Astarion rolled his eyes but complied, scaling down the tree quietly, much unlike Gale earlier, who was still fiddling around his pockets with your intimates. “A party pooper, even.”

As repulsive the idea to leave you was, it was reasonable. Begrudingly, everyone quietly sat up or climbed down and quietly attempted to find their way through the dense, dark forest, sharing little observations and hushed chitchat along the way. And soon enough, the party found themselves in familiar territory, now gathering around and settling down near the campfire like they previously had before you announced your leave, as if they didn’t just claw their way through eachother earlier to see a scrap of your vulnerability.

The fire cast a warm glow over the party as they immersed in chitchat, a few (namely Shadowheart and Astarion) pestering and even offering a bargain to Gale for the underclothes he had nicked earlier. The wizard was not deterred; fair and square, he wagged his finger as if to say nuh-uh to the seething two. It was only shortly after, that you came stumbling back into camp like a lost fawn, hair and body language calm and loose but the armor remaining stiff on your body.

Karlach coughed to let the others know you had arrived from your personal time. “Soldier! You’re back!” You greeted her with a nod, before raising a brow and sweeping your eyes amongst them. Gale swallowed, placing a protective hand over the pocket that held your garments.

“You would not believe what happened.” You sighed in utter distress before plopping yourself down besides Halsin and Astarion on the log to let the fire embrace you with warmth, piquing everyone’s interest and attention with intense ease. “A wandering owlbear ate my clothes.”

They all collectively either guffawed or choked on their spit, Lae’zel scoffing and Astarion groaning amongst them. Right. Of course, you would have thought it was a fucking owlbear. Thieving owlbears that take normal, musky clothes instead of shiny armor.

“Ah, owlbears.” Gale tutted and sighed with faux sympathy, nervously chuckling and shifting to hide the lump in his pockets. “They’d eat almost anything, really.”

Astarion shot him a bewildered look, as if to ask, don’t you? You swallowed two of my books last night!

“You can borrow my clothes, for the night.” Shadowheart butted in, suddenly slotting herself behind you and setting a reassuring palm on your shoulder. You smiled at her, gazing up at her gratefully. “Thank you, Sha—”

“Well, you can have my clothes!” Karlach and Lae’zel shot up in unison.

“Sharing your old filth, I can sew them new clothes!” Astarion argued, until everyone started refuting eachother and proposing that you take theirs and whatnot.

You sighed with exasperated fondness, immensely troubled but somewhat used to it as you watch your companions pointlessly banter, having little doubt that by the end of the night, you’d have a fair share of everyone’s wardrobe into yours.

Still, you hope to the very bottom of your heart that the “owlbear” that stole your clothes had a full tummy, at least.

[tlonista]

I love Wyllstarion but I feel like we could use more fic about why Wyll falls for Astarion alongside Wyll being Astarion's fairy-tale prince. Because look, Astarion is obviously gorgeous, and Wyll drops comments suggesting he finds him attractive, but early-game Astarion is also casually cruel and kinda goddamn irritating if you're a good-aligned character. There's a lot of free real estate around exploring what an idealistic romantic like Wyll gets from a relationship where yes, the vampire is hot and suave and funny, but he's also constantly mocking everything the Blade of Frontiers stands for, including specifically everything he thinks about sex and relationships. Contrary to romcom logic this would in fact put a lot of people off!

The most obvious dynamic for me is probably that Wyll would be fascinated by Astarion, both from the perspective of a professional monster hunter traveling with a monster (which adds its own taboo charge to everything) and a young Baldurian exile traveling with an older lifelong city-dweller. Astarion knows all the bars Wyll barely got a chance to visit before getting exiled! He remembers all the balls and festivals Wyll grew up with, even if he's a little vague about what he was doing there! Sure he can be callous and mean, but it's outweighed by him being a genuinely interesting travel companion.

And in general the game could've done more with the fact that Wyll's whole life is spent trying to be a folk hero with a literal devil at his shoulder trying to pervert his good intentions. It feels like he should be a little more shaken up about the Karlach thing - he almost killed a desperate woman by Just Following Orders! And most companions have some level of "forced to be evil to survive" going on, but especially in Act 1, Astarion is the most up-front about it. He's a natural choice for Wyll to commiserate with about Mizora, and if anything the fact that Astarion is vocally anti-heroics means Wyll's less worried about him being judgmental.

I mean look I'm very into Astarion hurt/comfort and whump and to some extent that means I'm just going to gravitate to more Astarion-focused stuff, but I read a fair amount of Wyllstarion and it seems like there's room for relationships that build out their foil-ness a bit more, from either character's POV.

[snotsloth]

There's this really great writing advice post:

Basically it's about how if you have a major defining trait of a character, you should subvert that trait at some point. For example, "if you write a confident genius, make them be wrong, or get stumped once in a while." Characters, like people in real life, should have a certain amount of inconsistency.

But more than that, it's important to show a character reach a point where their normal skills and behaviors are not enough to get them through it. This is often a turning point, a scraping of the bottom of the barrel, a revelation, a fuck it might as well moment. A character falling to pieces is an opportunity to build themselves back into something new.

Of course, I immediately started thinking about Baldur's Gate 3 because the worm has eaten my brain. But this is one of the reasons the writing in BG3 is so good. Every character is their own foil. They're all inconsistent, multi-dimensional, and messy. And it's in the mess we see who they really are. Not only are all the companions this way (maybe minus Minsc) but so are many of the side characters also have this level of complexity.

Here's just some examples from the top of my head:

Astarion, the seductive flirt is actually viscerally averse to physical touch

Shadowheart, the emotionally distant bitchy character who keeps more secrets than Tav keeps loot is actually so compassionate and loving that her goddess has to keep wiping her mind to keep her in line

Gale is the most gifted wizard in generations, and he knows it and will talk about it brazenly but he has spent the past handful of years as a complete shut-in with only a winged cat for company.

Wyll is the brave folk hero, full of bravado and braggadocio, but he agonizes over every major decision and frequently doubts his own judgement on things.

Karlach is a giant, super strong warrior who can literally set herself on fucking fire, but she has a heart of glass and just wants someone to be gentle to her.

Lae'zel is a true believer who has to come to terms with the fact that her goddess is a conwoman.

Halsin is set up as this wise, powerful leader who has been arch druid for over a century but once you get to know him he confesses that the role was kind of forced upon him and he's felt trapped the whole time.

Jaheira similarly is a wise, clever and experienced older adventurer but dislikes reminiscing on the past and prefers to only look forward.

The Emperor claims to be on your side, that your fights are the same fight, but if you refuse to do what it wants, eventually it will abandon you because the Emperor's top priority is its own survival. But on the other hand! It also demonstrates the capacity for sentimentality and regret over the companions it has lost to fate or its own decisions over the centuries.

Even Zevlor! In act one, he comes across as a hyper-competent leader who has kept the core of his community together and alive through literal hell. But at the end of act two you can find out that he ultimately failed when The Absolute promised to restore his former paladin powers to him if only he swore himself to her, AND HE DID! Like he quickly comes to regret that decision but he still fucked it up when it mattered most. And the game doesn't show this as necessarily "he was a shit leader all along" it's more like "everyone is capable of terrible things under the right circumstances."

Okay enough rambling. This game is really fucking good y'all and the character work is fantastic and I probably will not shut up about it for at least a few months.

[old-stoneface]

ive been seeing people claim that different characters are astarion's foil and i dont know why some people have yet to realize that all of the main six companions in bg3 are similar in so many very meaningful ways . you can ostensibly argue (albeit with varying strength and success) that any one of the characters in that party can act as a foil to another. also, im not really sure if most people know what a character foil is......maybe we need to reintroduce the phrase "character parallel" to the online character analysis layman's vocabulary. a "foil" is a character that has traits that contrast the protagonist or simply another character in the story, but it does not stop there. they dont have to be strict opposites. sometimes its just a matter of two characters having traits that accentuate or bring attention to each other's aforementioned traits.

a really good example of this is horatio and hamlet from hamlet, where hamlet is ruled by his emotions and horatio is ruled by rational thinking, a theme repeatedly mentioned throughout the play in the sense that horatio will ask hamlet to be more calculating, and hamlet will implore horatio to be more emotional. an example of a parallel in the same play would be hamlet and laertes (ophelia's brother), where in the end, due to their combined familial losses and the tragedy that befalls them, they are both corrupted by their volatile emotions/madness turning inward and then coming under the influence of other figures in their lives. theres a lot more going on in that play obviously but these are basic good examples of the ideas of foils and parallels.

in the case of astarion and wyll, their motivations and personalities are very good foil material, seeing as right away there is a distinct difference in their opinions on heroism, something that very much defines both of them. astarion is, when glanced over as a whole, a villain, while wyll is clearly a hero, immediately creating a dichotomy tantalizing to both the audience and the characters themselves as seen in their party interactions. with astarion and gale, we see more a foil-ness of their experience with relationships and personalities. gale is not a hero, and astarion's general villainity means nothing to him. they do not clash. its more about how they act in relationship to the player that causes interest between the two of them, how astarion is clearly uninterested in genuine emotions and wants to be manipulative, whereas gale is overly sincere and begs for attention rather desperately. however, when it comes to pointing out parallels that further promote and intrigue the dynamic of foils...we have the constant theme of being under someone else's control in this game and being forced by obligation to follow these rules imposed by someone else. astarion and cazador, wyll and mizora (and his father, in some ways), gale and mystra, shadowheart and shar, lae'zel and vlakiith (and githyanki tradition as a whole), karlach and literally every authority figure that wormed their way into her life but in particular - zariel. as i play more of the game and learn more about each character, im sure ill discover even more stuff that makes various characters into parallels or foils. i know theres stuff w halsin that will be interesting to me.

thats what i mean by there are traits in every character in the main party that both compliment and clash. and this is also a reminder that foils and parallels do not have to be romantic, but they can be. so like..idk. i dont really have a conclusion here. i just wanted to talk about this lmao